South Korea Says North Korea agrees to talks on Jan.9 2018

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) North Korea has accepted South Korea's offer for official talks and will be the first high-level link between the two countries in more than two years.

A spokesman for the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Baik Tae-hyun, said correspondents said on Friday in North Korea, their southern neighbor by fax at 10:16 a.m. local time (8:16 p.m. on Thursday, ET) who received the offer from the South to begin negotiations.
Person-to-person talks will take place on January 9 - the day after the birthday of Kim Jong One, a North Korean leader, at the House of Peace, located on the right side of Korea's seasonal village called Panmunjom, located in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two countries, Baik said.
The spokesman said both sides agreed to work on the details of the "exchange of documents" talks and added that the agenda items would be "issues of improving inter-Korean relations, including the Pyeongchang Olympic Games" . "
The fax message that received the long offer of talks was Ri Son Kwon, chair of the North Korea Committee for the Peace Conference of the Motherland. He was referred to the de facto cooperative, South Korean Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, Baik added.
The latest inter-Korean talks were a joint ministerial meeting between South and North Korea in December 2015 in the Kaesong industrial zone jointly in North Korea.
The industrial park, which opened in 2004 in a rare cooperation show between the two Koreas, was shut down in 2016 in response to Pyongyang's missile attack and nuclear tests.

Thaw
The announcement comes from the sense of other signs of early reintegration between the two wars.
In recent days, a full line between Seoul and Pyongyang, which has remained unused for two years, has again been called, which has been widely regarded as the main diplomatic development. At least five calls have been made through the cross-border channel since then.
The two Koreas came together after Kim Jong, the North's leader, explained the hope during the New Year's day direction that the North Korean delegation could attend the next month's Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Two North Korean athletes, the figure skiers Ryom Tae-Ok and Kim Ju-sik, have qualified for the Games. Although Pyongyang failed in a deadline for both, it is understood that the IOC could allow an exception.
During the annual address, Kim also expressed the desire for a peaceful solution for the decades between decades and South Korea. The Korean War ended in armistice in 1953, making the two countries have been war ever since.
Last year, Korea's President Jae-in told CNN that North Korea's participation in Pyeongchang "will provide a great opportunity for peace and harmonization among Koreans."

Different reaction
A similar sense of optimism still extended beyond the Korean peninsula.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, known as the North Korean nuclear bloc, is "completely unacceptable" and said the security situation facing his country is the most serious since World War II.
So far, US officials have held such a suspicious view of Kim's sincerity in easing tensions.
Speaking on Tuesday, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, strongly warned North Korea, saying the United States "will never accept nuclear North Korea."

However, the signs suggest that the toughness of the United States may decrease in light of recent developments. In a telephone call between US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Moon on Thursday, both leaders agreed not to conduct joint military exercises during the Olympics in Pyeongchang, according to the statement of the South Korean government.
The US military official also confirmed to CNN that there would be no joint exercises during the Games.

Kim Jong One, a leader of North Korea, has long criticized the UD-Korean exercises, saying they are a direct threat to Pyongyang and a potential barrier to resuming diplomatic talks.
The decision to carry out military exercises is a diplomatic response from the US president, who earlier this week was a test to tweet that his nuclear button "much more and more powerful" than Kim.
Trump has tried to take credit since resuming communication between Pyongyang and Seoul.
"With each of the" failure specialists "pushing, one really believes that discussions and dialogue would take place between North and North Korea at the moment, if I were not strong, strong and ready to compromise our" possible "total against the North," Trump tweeted Thursday morning.
"Blink, but the conversations are good!" he added.